Undeterred by a raft of airline bankruptcies caused by the record fuel price, British Airways brought the world’s newest airline into being yesterday.

The inaugural service, which took off from Paris Orly destined for New York, launched just a day after Penelope Butcher of Morgan Stanley warned that the aviation industry was flying into a period that, because of soaring oil price and rapidly slowing economies, would be worse than the fraught years after 9/11, when several major carriers went bust, as well as the 1992-93 recession.